FR: Philly D2: Live 8 and Soviet 4

7/2. I walked for an hour from Front Street uptown to the park where the concert was being held. Live 8 was a sea of like a million and a half people. Literally. It took at hour to work my way up to the second screen, with the actual stage still out of sight. I pulled back and worked the perimeter. Each band played only 3 songs. But it was certainly an experience. It was funny when they would throw the live feed from the other locations up on the screens, and since most the crow couldn’t see a stage anyway, people thought they were watching artist performing there in Philly. Madonna is here? U2 is here? Funny because there was really no difference.

Opener for you guys that think they matter: “What is going on here? Why are all these people here? I just got to Philly and I wanted to go to the art museum and I run into THIS! Must be a really big art opening or something….” When they were like “are you serious?” I’d give them a little punch and roll my eyes for their gullibility and go into real impressions of Philly.I spent most my time with this witty and feisty girl who had traveled a bit and we had a lot to talk about. Didn’t really get too far in the PU sense, but it was fun. Actually venue changed from this concert to a grocery store to get drinks. Had a few more positive interactions. The show (and the walking) was quite tiring. My legs are so sore.

The street PU on the way back was more likely to pan out than anything at the show. I’ve got four girls from Sweden rolling with me at one point. Then four girls from former soviet countries. Opener: “You girls look like fun. Did you see this mural over here? No? You have to see this!” I noticed they had cameras and I led them a couple blocks to this mural. One girl was really against me because she was tired and they were leaving for NYC the next day. One girl was neutral and kinda paced to crabby girl. The other two were by far the hottest and I had them both engaged. The girl from Kazakhstan was gorgeous and very much into me. I complimented her on her curiosity and her desire to learn. She lit up. She had like the most subtle Asian features—so so cute. I walked them to their hostel and this girl is asking a million questions. The plan was (and OK’ed with the crabby girl) that I would walk them back, and the two fun, not-tired girls would roll with me to the club district. Both were 21. I gave my girl my contact info. They went up and I waited about 10 minutes. Logistics were bad anyway, so I left.

I hit South Street, which I thought was really cool on Friday, and tonight it was a straight-up ghetto. I kinda like that there are so many cops for crowd control and basically keeping people from loitering. I called it a night.

It would definitely be nice to have more time and more money to spend in Philly. I’d check out the Mutter Museum and the Mummer Museum and the Mushroom Museum. (No shit, look them up.) And somewhere I passed the Museum of Underground Art. Looked intriguing. These are the kinds of places I would visit with someone that I really got along with because we’d have a great time laughing and pointing out the absurdity of it all.

Email from my soviet girl:

Hello, I want to say that I admire your life philosophy and your aspiration to learn more about the world outside and inside you. You probably don't remember me, we met in Philadelphia last weekend. I have decided to write you and I am really glad that talking to me was so important for you, I must say that you did a great job. I would love you to reply me and we could become friends and share our experiences, because you are someone I really want to know. I would be really glad to hear from you.